Uglies, by Scott Westerfield, is the first in a series of four amazing books. Uglies is about a city approximately three centuries after our civilization ends. This city is split into two parts: Uglyville and Prettytown. In this town, when a person turns sixteen, instead of getting a license they get a surgery that changes them into a person called a “pretty”. The protagonist, Tally Youngblood, loses her best friend to this surgery. She ends up meeting a girl named Shay who tells her about Smoke: a place of Uglies who don’t want to become pretty.

This book has a very good message because it shows how being perfect isn’t always a good thing to accomplish. It shows this because the pretties are bubble-headed even though they are beautiful. The pretties are altered to be lazy-minded, and most of them look very alike. It shows that you have to be comfortable in your own skin, no matter what. In Uglies, Tally grew up with people pointing out her imperfections and how ugly she was. But in the end, Tally realizes that she isn’t ugly at all—she learns to love the skin she’s in.

This book is full of action and adventure. Shay leaves for smoke the night before the operation that will turn her into a pretty. Tally is hired to find her and discover the place called Smoke. She has to travel through the woods alone, trying to find Smoke using directions that are in code. There are unbelievable obstacles and unexpected turns that make Tally learn so much about what was beyond her home city. Uglies would be a great book for anyone who loves adventurous books, and if they do, it will be like a vacuum to them, sucking them into the story.